Asus Zenbook UX31E review

Wired rating

Wired

Tired

Not the fastest, no Ethernet connection

Price

£1,200

The ultrabook concept -- thin, light, affordable -- may be an
Intel construction, but Asus was one of the first to make it a
reality with the Zenbook.

It's brushed metal casework is icily austere, but very cool in a
retro futurist sort of a way. At 1.4kg it's certainly light (though
not in the Toshiba Portege 1.12kg league) and it ticks the thin box at
17mm, including rubber footrests, at its rear, tapering to just 3mm
at its leading edge. It feels solid and reliable too.

The 13.3-inch screen delivers a startlingly sharp, bright and
clear resolution of 1600x900 pixels, though perhaps the contrast
ratio of 203:1 leaves a little to be desired, especially when
watching movies, shading dark greys
into black just a little too readily.

The big metal keys of the keyboard are easy enough to use and
responsive under the fingers, though it's a pity there's no option
to backlight them. The touchpad is glass, making it beautifully
smooth to the touch, though there's just the faintest trace of lag
in use. Left and right mouse buttons can be a little bit too
sensitive too, occasionally activating onscreen buttons that you
didn't think you'd clicked.

Connectivity-wise it's not the most fully-featured ultrabook
you'll see. There are just two USB sockets and no Ethernet at all.
There is however a mini HDMI output, mini VGA and an MMC/SD card
reader. Wirelessly speaking it has Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and the latest
Bluetooth 4.0.

It's a nippy little mover, with its low-voltage Core i7-2677M
processor that can go from a nominal 1.8GHz clock speed up to
2.9GHz when necessary, and a fast 128GB Sandforce SSD too.

It pops out of sleep mode in a couple of seconds (and only 22
seconds from cold off to on) and races through programmes and menus
in a twinkling. It clocked up a PCMark
benchmark score of 2709 -- not the very fastest, but getting
close.

However, it took its own sweet time encoding our test 11-minute
movie for iTunes, delivering it in 6 minutes. For gaming it did
okay, delivering typical frame rates in the 90s, with occasional
bursts into three figures.

The ICEpower SonicMaster audio system from posh speaker
manufacturer Bang
& Olufsen makes a difference though -- out of the box,
movies, games and music sound a cut above most laptops' tinny
excretions.

Battery-wise it delivered a good eight hours of use, which
should see you through the average working day.

Conclusion
The Asus Zenbook looks and feels great, and it's a pleasure to
use. But it's not the fastest ultrabook you'll come across though,
so if performance is crucial, you'd be best to look elsewhere.
Likewise, if you need a wired Ethernet connection, this isn't the
ultrabook for you.